Friday, November 04, 2016

Random Thought of the Day

One of my early political memories is my mother's reaction to the sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton in 1992.
"Someone is being really evil here," she said.  "And I don't know who it is.  Either he assaulted these women and he's lying about it, or they're making it up to smear him.  Either way someone is being really evil, and I wish I knew who it was."

Back in 1992, I was 14 and considered myself a Republican, and was entirely predisposed to believe Clinton was evil.    By 1996, I was 18, and considered myself a Democratic partisan, and was predisposed to believing the whole thing was a smear job.

Looking at it now, I have to say there seems to be a realistic possibility that Bill Clinton actually did assault those women.  (And it pains me to say this as a Democratic partisan, but we need to be honest with ourselves.)

But the point is that back in 1992, the whole thing was obscured enough in the fog of "He said/ She said" that good people could have reasonable doubts what had really happened.

But if, theoretically, back in 1992 Bill Clinton had been caught on audio tape bragging about how he liked to sexually assault women, then that would have entirely cleared away the doubt from the whole situation.  It would no longer be a case of "He said/ She said" but it would be a case of "She said, and he also confirmed that this is exactly the kind of thing he has often done in the past".

Really, I don't understand how anyone could doubt that Trump has sexually assaulted all the women who have accused him.
I mean, yes, I know, in the real world sometimes false allegations get made, even about something as serious as rape.  (And I myself made exactly this point in my review of the movie Scottsboro: An American Tragedy).
But in this particular case when Trump has bragged about exactly this behavior on audio tape, how could any one doubt the stories of these women?

4 comments:

dpreimer said...

*Sigh* Lots of people being evil here, alas.

Joel Swagman said...

I think this has been the worst election I've ever lived through

dpreimer said...

Me too. I thought Reagan/Carter was bad.

dpreimer said...

Also: I have a working theory that one reason why Millennials don't relate to Hillary is because they do relate to Monica Lewinsky. Throwing her under the bus and never looking back -- that's a difficult thing to shrug off.